Posts I've Made

I've been at 60-something complete for months and months. I jumped a few % points thanks to the Scarlet invasions, which forced me into some maps I've never bothered with. I've always thought about going back and getting 100%, but it takes so long and there are so many new things coming out every two weeks, I don't feel like I have the time to go do that anymore. I barely have time to get dailies more than a couple times a week, so if I want to see any of the new content that's pretty much all I can do. I was SO glad SAB came back out because I don't care about that at all, and it finally gave me some time to get in a little crafting and some dailies again. (Of course, the main crafting professions I had left to finish are now up to 500, and getting from 400 to 500 on one profession takes about my entire bank account since release, so I guess that's not really happening anymore.)

Reading this thread, I'm VERY glad I went ahead and got the WvW maps early on, back when rotations were regular and you didn't have to wait a month to randomly be "red." Also it has helped a ton that my realm has always rocked at WvW. You're all right, though: it's a huge pain and nothing but a waste of WvW time.

Tinfoil hat conspiracies aside, this is another good way to ask, "how much magic find is enough?"

It takes 10,000 luck to get to 44%. It takes another 10,000 to get to 57%. Twice the effort for a 13% gain: is it worth it? And as above, the same effort to get to 100% MF doubled will get you to about 125. Is that worth it? Maybe, maybe not. It really comes down to: how long do you think it will take to recoup your investment, and do you think the game will even last that long or that you'll even play that much (if we're talking 5 years, etc.).

Another factor, of course, is whether or not you paid close to vendor price for junk blues and greens to boost up your MF or if you're paying today's prices. Needless to say, planning ahead once again gains you a huge benefit.

Of course, this is all really academic for the vast majority of players. I have a feeling the vast majority just went from <5% MF to >20% with this update. And now they're making more money on loot. Win-win! I have a feeling even after another year, very few people will actually be over 100% MF, because very few can afford it. But we shall see.

The "real" diminishing returns - which will be quite tricky to calculate and possibly different for every individual - is the point at which your returns on MF are generating enough extra income that it's worth it, but you don't believe more MF will make enough of a difference to continue to invest in it. For example, if you get to 100 MF, is it really worth ~400 salvaged items to get to 101%? Will you really see a continued return on investment? Or is the benefit from 100% enough? Obviously for some, only the maximum will be enough. For many, I suspect the low 20s or 30s will be fine.

Now that the "luck chart" on the wiki (linked above) is getting filled out, you can see about how much it takes to increase at those higher levels. For example, around 150, it takes about 12,000 luck to go up 1%. I'm sure someone else will come out with a much better chart to show this, but I'm going to estimate that the luck-to-salvage ratio is about 10 luck per salvage. (That's based on the roughly 75% chance - another guess - of getting something from a salvage, and the chance that you might get a slightly better essence each time. Still: a complete guess.) I think low-end blues for salvage are probably a little overpriced at the moment, since everyone's trying to get in on the luck action and get some nice base numbers going, but let's say they'll settle back around 1.5 silver per blue (slightly less than double the pre-patch price). So again, completely guessing, but we'll call that 1.5 silver per 10 luck. That's 1200 x 1.5 silver, or 1800 silver, or 1.8 gold, to raise your luck stat from 150 to 151. We'll do some rounding and pretend that it would cost you about 18 gold (either in direct purchases or in lost value from not selling your loot) to get from 150 to 160. The question becomes: is that worth it? Does that extra 10% (when you already have 150) mean anything? Will you ever recoup that 18g? Without true drop numbers, it's impossible to even estimate how long that would take. And of course, some optimists would already say: but if that extra 10% got you a precursor, it would pay for itself 30 times over! But on average, I would think it would take hundreds of hours to really see a benefit from that extra 10%. And the investment would be huge.

Of course, if you already had a zillion gold, you'd have bought up tens of thousands of rares on the cheap already, significantly lowering that cost (as has occured). And of course, the higher magic find will pay for itself sooner the sooner you get it. So it is definitely a long-term investment for a few.